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Further Reading

We've written several times about what a huge, sprawling company Google is and how many projects the company has going at any given time. Now-former CEO Larry Page apparently agrees: as part of a big shake-up, Page announced today that he is now the CEO of "Alphabet," a brand-new company of which Google is just one part. Page will be CEO of Alphabet, and fellow Google co-founder Sergey Brin will be helping him run Alphabet in some capacity. Sundar Pichai is now the CEO of the subsidiary known as Google.

This is no mere rebranding. As Page writes, "Alphabet Inc. will replace Google Inc. as the publicly-traded entity and all shares of Google will automatically convert into the same number of shares of Alphabet, with all of the same rights. Google will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet. Our two classes of shares will continue to trade on Nasdaq as GOOGL and GOOG." All the Alphabet subsidiaries, including Google, will be using "segment reporting" to report their financial results separately as well.

Page describes the Google part of Alphabet as a "slimmed-down" company that still encompasses most of the things we think of as Google products—things like Google Now, Google Photos, and Google Maps are mentioned by name. Both Chrome and Android will continue under the Google banner. YouTube, which already operates as its own subsidiary under CEO Susan Wojcicki, will also remain under Google.

Other initiatives, which Page describes as "far afield of our main Internet products," will be subsidiaries of Alphabet with "a strong CEO who runs each business." Page mentions the Life Sciences division, which is responsible for that smart contact lens concept among other things; Calico, which "aim[s] to devise interventions that slow aging and counteract age-related diseases"; and the experimental X lab as subsidiaries that are now under the Alphabet banner rather than Google's.

Page says that he does not intend the Alphabet brand to replace Google's or any of the other Alphabet subsidiaries' on any products—you won't be using Alphabet Mail or Alphabet Chrome any time soon, in other words. "The whole point is that Alphabet companies should have independence and develop their own brands," he writes.

In the short term, we wouldn't expect using Google's various products to change. Pichai has been running big brands like Chrome and Android for several years, and he's been running the Internet businesses since last October. He will remain in charge of those products, and he still won't be responsible for handling the out-of-left-field concept products that the company periodically announces. If anything, sprawling events like the Google I/O developer conference could become a bit less sprawl-y, focusing solely on actual shipping Google products and less on works-in-progress like Internet balloons or secret barges.

This is a big change for one of tech's biggest companies, and it's likely just the tip of the iceberg. We'll continue to look for new information about Alphabet and its subsidiary companies in the coming days and weeks.

Update: Alphabet has filed Form 8-K with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and the form gives us a bit more insight into personnel changes and which companies will switch from being Google projects to Alphabet subsidiaries.

Officially, Sergey Brin is now President of Alphabet. Eric Schmidt, the onetime Google CEO who became its executive chairman and advisor when Page stepped back into the CEO role, is now Executive Chairman of Alphabet. Ruth Porat will become Senior Vice President and CFO of Alphabet while simultaneously staying on as the CFO of Google. David Drummond will be Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer and Secretary of Alphabet.

Products that will remain under Google include "search, ads, maps, apps, YouTube and Android and the related technical infrastructure," defined as the "Google business." Chrome, while not on that list, will also remain under Google. Calico, Nest, Fiber, Google Ventures, Google Capital, and Google X will all become Alphabet subsidiary companies, though a Google spokesperson told Ars that we wouldn't have a full list until the company filed its fourth-quarter financial results.

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Andrew Cunningham
Andrew wrote and edited tech news and reviews at Ars Technica from 2012 to 2017, where he still occasionally freelances; he is currently a lead editor at Wirecutter. He also records a weekly book podcast called Overdue. Twitter@AndrewWrites